Maybe there really is a 12-step program somewhere for city governments. Mayors and aldermen could gather in a circle, sit in those hard folding chairs, confess their money woes and find support for mending their spending.

If admitting a problem is the first step toward recovery, Mayor Raye Turner and the city of Russellville only have 11 steps left to go.

At Thursday's council meeting, the mayor called the situation what it is, a "financial crisis." No longer is the problem a "timing" issue. "The issue is tax dollars aren't coming in to support our current level of services," Turner said.

During her state of the city presentation, the mayor outlined how the problem has developed over the years. Of primary concern is the decline in revenue, which comes to 6 percent in just the last two years.

This year, the anticipated revenue could be 2 percent below projections, or about what City Treasurer Donna Wall originally predicted before being told by the council to follow a more rosy scenario.

Turner's presentation got the attention of the City Council, which held off on spending reserve funds on capital projects. The city has $1 million in reserves in the bank, plus another $1 million that could be diverted from a construction project on East 16th Street. (We still hold that using those funds, even if they could be legally replaced by revenue from the city's sales tax for street and drainage projects, would be a violation of a commitment to residents and voters.)

The aldermen left untouched a proposal that had been made to use reserves to repair the roof of the Hughes Center and buy seven replacement police cars.

The council still must come to grips with the reality of the budget. Last November, a $371,000 windfall came in the form of an unexpected credit for overpayments to pension funds. That windfall had dried up and blown away by January of this year, used to delay facing the budget realities that were evident for most of last year.

There is no doubt that finding a solution will be difficult, even painful. Unless a third option can be found, the only choices are raising revenue or cutting spending, or some combination of both.

The rest of us out in other areas of Pope County shouldn't take some perverse pleasure in Russellville's plight. A blighted, bankrupt Russellville will only drag down the prospects of Dover, Pottsville and Atkins, as well as the rural areas. Russellville is the economic engine that lets other areas thrive, which brings us again to the need for all the cities and the county government to work together for the common good.

It's like the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. "We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately."